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Australian GP: Very happy with great opening day

Jonas Folger keeps going on full throttle as he stayed within the front group during both sessions on day one of practice at the picturesque Phillip Island circuit.

After fantastic early summer weather during the previous days somewhat for everyday life returned to South Australia on Friday. This region is famous for it’s changing weather conditions with four season in a day normally which proved to be the case again today but not that bad. Repeatedly some drizzling rain forced riders and teams to interrupt their work during practice session or hampered them, before bright sunshine turned up the action this afternoon at the right time for FP2. Regardless of all cases, Folger and his crew worked through their agenda routinely. Thanks to his two consistent strong sessions, he finished the opening day at Phillip Island as fifth fastest rider in the combined practice times.

“Till now I’m very satisfied how things worked out. During both session I was constant amongst the frontrunners; I finished FP1 with the third fastest lap time and in the afternoon I was fifth fastest finally with just three tenth of a second off the pace. About the small gap and the strong results, I think I can be really happy. In any case, I immediately found a good feeling for the track and I enjoyed every single lap out there to its utmost. The fast track layout here is in any case a very welcome alternation to Motegi for example even though I like the Japanese track too. We were working a lot with the balance of the bike this afternoon and thereby we already found a good direction to go, even we had to adjust things every time as the faster we were. However, for my last run we were able to do a really good step after that I was able to set my fastest lap of the day. Unfortunate I couldn’t put together my fastest partial times for a really hot lap so there is still room for improvement. Apart from that, there is still potential coming from my feeling, which is why I’m very confident for tomorrow, in particular for qualifying practice. Because of this I would say it was a good start into the weekend in general, of course just because of the fact that we concluded Friday with just three tenth of a second gap. In addition, we didn’t have any problems coming from the tyres, although we were riding only the hard compound rear all the time, which is the softer option for this track. Dunlop has brought hard and extra-hard options to Phillip Island due to the abrasive tarmac here. In any case, we were doing more than a race distance with one set of tyres today, without any difficulties. For tomorrow and the remaining weekend in general everything look positive.”